


You May Be Immortal, But So Are Wrinkles

by CommanderTeatime



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magnus Bane Needs A Hug, POV Catarina Loss, Post-Episode: s03e10 Erchomai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:28:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommanderTeatime/pseuds/CommanderTeatime
Summary: When Magnus stepped through Cat's portal, the consequences of his actions still hadn't hit him. When Magnus held the arrow in his hands, staring at the glittering arrowhead, the feather fletching, feeling the coolness of the metal shaft, the consequences of his actions still hadn't hit him. When Magnus sat on the side of his bed, watching every breath his Alexander took as though it would be his last, the consequences of his actions, hit him gently, like the sun melting the wax from Icarus's wings.Magnus falls and Catarina catches him.





	You May Be Immortal, But So Are Wrinkles

Cat put her hand on Magnus’s shoulder and gave him a light, reassuring squeeze before sitting down beside him on his bed. She let her hand trail down from his shoulder to the crook of his arm. She couldn’t bring herself to say anything, or really do anything. She had put so much of her magic into Alec that the air around them buzzed with it. 

Magnus couldn’t keep his eyes off of him, watching every breath that Alec breathed as though he might stop. They both knew that he wouldn’t. They knew that he was just as spent as they were, that he, too, needed to recover. 

They sat like that, together, on Magnus’s side of the bed, in absolute silence. Magnus would close his eyes and just breathe for a few moments, but he would always open them to look at Alec, his hands aching to touch him, but not able to. Cat watched him. She watched Magnus try to hide his pain in long blinks, in shaking fingertips, in deep breaths, and in the silence they shared.

She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, how Magnus had lost his magic, how Alec had ended up in the middle of a dark delivery bay somewhere near Broadway and Lafayette with an arrow stuck almost through his heart. Cat wanted answers, but she knew she wouldn’t get them from Magnus or Alec. Instead, she opted to stay there, and be the rock that she knew Magnus was trying so hard to be. 

Her hand moved from his arm to his hand. She squeezed his fingertips a little, just a gentle reminder that she was there, she was willing to listen, she was willing to do. She wanted to fix it, to repair the damage she saw, but she was unsure of just how deep it went. 

Magic was a warlock’s foundation, their blood, their soul, their world. 

An awful voice spoke out of the corner of Cat’s mind.  _ At least it wasn’t me. _

She wanted to scold that voice, to scold her conscious, the little edge that came with centuries of aging. The voice that sounded so much like Magnus, when he would throw himself against a couch, and completely melt into it with a winning smile, a drink in hand, glitter around his eyes. 

 

Cat could remember when they had just barely escaped the police, sneaking back into the speakeasy and blending into the mess of folks and cigarette smoke. Magnus had brought her into the far corner of the room, the area they reserved for themselves. He lit a cigarette with his fingers and breathed in the awful cloying nicotine. 

He breathed out the smoke, ghosts of time wafting into the air of the stingy bar. _ “At least it wasn’t me.” _ He had said, a playful smile on his face.  _ “And it wasn’t you, Cat, so stop looking like that…” _

 

She relaxed her grip on Magnus’s hand and moved up to touch his face. He turned away from Alec to look at her and her deep, brown eyes. “Stop looking like that,” she echoed her memory of him, thinking back to how he had said the words with a playful grin, magicked her a martini and thrust it into her fingers so brusquely it had startled the glamour from her hand. “You may be immortal, but so are wrinkles.” She let her thumb gently touch his cheekbone. 

Magnus smiled softly at the fond memory of Chicago in the prohibition. It was hard not to. He let his hand touch hers and brought it down to his lap. He looked over her palm, looking at all of the lines on her hands from the years of work she had put in to her life.

“Thank you,” his voice was just a whisper between them, but the silence was enough to let the words carry.

Cat returned his smile, soft and pained. She wasn’t sure she would ever understand just how Magnus hurt. Cat lived her life on the sidelines of the shadow world, half in, half out. She was careful now that she had Madzie to raise, and her job at the hospital. She didn’t run speakeasies anymore, or chase after Magnus’s coattails as often as she used to. 

Magnus squeezed her hand in his own, threading his fingers through hers. “I gave it all up.” He said finally, his voice so soft she was afraid that moving from where she was, from the way she looked at him, that it might break him. 

Cat remained silent. 

“I gave it all up for him.” Magnus’s voice was shaking, weighing down the soft syllables with sobs that wouldn’t come, a hurt that wouldn’t surface, that couldn’t surface. 

His dark eyes were watering with tears, and slowly, it dawned on Cat that his golden eyes would never grace his face again. The brown eyes that he had hid behind, the mask that he found comfort in, was what was destroying him. 

Cat’s entire being ached as the tears started to spill down his face, his whole body shaking with every breath that got caught in his lungs. He looked down at the space in between them, his hands still holding hers. 

The hard exterior of Magnus Bane was dead. The smile behind the curved lip of a martini glass, the glow of a cat’s reflective eyes in the darkness of a room, the soft, electric pulse of azure magic that permeated whatever he touched, as though his life simply leeched onto it.  _ At least it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t you, Cat, so stop looking like that… you may be immortal, but so are wrinkles. _

She moved, holding him close to her, letting him wet her shoulder with his tears while he struggled to breathe. The weight of the world, of time, of pain, was crushing. Cat wanted nothing more than the alleviate the overbearing pressure that wanted to smother his flame. She let her hand run down his back, trying to soothe where the sun and its consequences had melted the wax on his back, leaving him clawing through empty air for the feathers that fell around him. 

 

There was a night they had shared in Paris once, sitting together on a fire escape. Magnus was more interested in reflecting back on where they had been than she was. He was leaned back, his legs dangling off of the iron grate floor, a cigarette in between his fingers, a glass of white wine beside him. 

Cat had removed her glamour and sat down beside him in a glistening blue gown that Magnus said looked like the stars above them. She took his wine and sipped it, setting it back, leaving an imprint of her lipstick, an echo that said she had been there. 

_“Do you ever feel like Icarus?”_ He had asked, not bothering to look away from the few blinking stars in the sky. They were suns, but distant, too distant to worry about. He would have to fly for years to approach them. 

Cat ran her finger over the lip of the wine glass, smudging the imprint of her lipstick. _“A little, but I have you to pull me back down.”_

Magnus made a sound, something like a laugh and a sigh. _“If I ever fly too high, let me fall.”_ He spoke to the sky. _“Let me fall, Cat, and let me die.”_ He had stood after telling her that, not bothering to pick up his wine, and left.

 

Cat let her hand move up to Magnus’s shoulders, then down his back again. Her thoughts wafted off into the distant part of her mind, her eyes moved to Alec. He was so different, like a distant planet in the night sky among stars. He wouldn’t burn Magnus, not like Camille had done, not like the world had done. 

He would not let Magnus die, and neither would she.

**Author's Note:**

> This was very heavily influenced by a song-- The Hearse by Matt Maeson. I couldn't stop thinking about how in love Magnus is with Alec, and how Cat has never really loved anyone like that, so she doesn't understand the sacrifice Magnus made. All she can do is listen to him, and try to pick up the pieces. 
> 
> Please leave comments, they inspire me to write more. Also, feel free to stop by tumblr. My Shadowhunter sideblog is umbralogia.tumblr.com


End file.
